


nervous demeanor

by dreamclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, hyuck is just happy to have a new friend, its sweet i promise, mark doesnt like to touch people, soft!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamclub/pseuds/dreamclub
Summary: Mark Lee works his way into Lee Donghyuck's friend group, wary of physical contact and emotionally clueless. As they get closer, his boundaries fall. So do Hyuck's.





	nervous demeanor

**Author's Note:**

> There are NO mentions of abuse in this story!! Mark doesn't have any sad reasons for not wanting physical contact I promise. There's like maybe one line of angst.
> 
> Part of this was written for a novel I'm writing (the hug part) and I loved the snippet so I wanted to write a little fic with it in it,,, so here this is!
> 
> If you like this, consider commenting, because I strive on validation!! <3

Sun shines over the basketball court, persistent and bright despite the lack of warmth it brings with it. In his thin sweater and ripped jeans, Hyuck shivers against the wind, back pressed firmly against the side of the empty concessions building.

It was kind of sad seeing it that way. A husk. During football season it was always full, surrounded by people and the smoke from the grill, spilled hot cocoas and stray french fries littering the ground. And now, like everything else, it’s empty.

Jaemin makes a basket, whooping and hollering, pounding Jeno’s back as he passes him. The wind carries his voice away, but Hyuck can tell that he was talking trash in his oddly sweet way by the color of Jeno’s cheeks (a pale bubblegum pink). Then he turns to clap Mark on the shoulder, his partner in the two-versus-two game, who flinches away.

Skittish and aloof. Always. Sure, he had a bright smile when he showed it, but he never makes physical contact and has the emotional intelligence of a rock. Hyuck wonders what made him that way.

Mark walks over to the bench Hyuck is sitting on, basketball shorts not appropriate for the chilly weather at all, and grabs his water bottle from its place on the ground. Silently, he chugs it. Hyuck traces his bobbing adam’s apple with his eyes, a stray bead of water trailing down the tanned skin. It is nearly cinematic.

“Isn’t it a little cold to be wearing those?” Hyuck asks, small smile on his face, because he’s never learned to not voice his thoughts.

Looking confused that Hyuck was speaking to him, Mark looks down at himself and mutters, “What?”

“The shorts.”

“Oh,” he blinks his wide eyes like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “It isn’t that cold.”

And with that, he walks away, concluding the longest conversation Hyuck has ever had with him.

-

Hyuck had spent the last few lunches squirreled away in the library, studying for all of the midterms his teachers decided to schedule on the same day, eyes going blurry over too-tiny text and blood replaced entirely with caffeine. Somewhere in the span of a week, Mark had started sitting at his lunch table.

“Don’t worry, I’m back,” Hyuck announces, plopping his bright red tray down on the table and smiling his brightest grin. Everyone else has given Mark a wide berth. Hyuck pointedly sits down in the chair next to him, not bothering to move when it skids across the linoleum with his weight.

Renjun steals a fry. “We didn’t worry.”

Kicking him under the table, Hyuck chooses not to comment for once, instead following the intense debate Jaemin and Jeno are having: dogs versus cats. Jeno is obviously on the cats side, waving his phone around to make his point, the slideshow he’s created of his cats playing while he gesticulates.

Mark follows the volley too, hunched over the table with his elbow resting in a pile of salt. When Hyuck reaches for his water bottle their arms brush, hoodie fabric just barely touching each other, and Mark jerks away like he’s been burned. Hyuck recoils and tries to not be offended. Or upset. If Mark wasn’t one for bodily contact, who was he to contradict that?

“How’s it feel to have lunch and a show?” Hyuck whispers conspiratorially to Mark, though it wasn’t very quiet at all.

“I’m on team dog, but I’m afraid Jeno will kill me if I speak up,” Mark whispers back, though he was much more successfully quiet than Hyuck was. His breath ghosts over Hyuck’s neck. It takes everything in him not to shudder.

Despite having a perfectly good plate of fries of his own, he steals one from Mark’s, dipping it in Jeno’s ketchup for good measure.

-

Jeno hosts a movie night in his basement, complete with popcorn and the off-brand m&m’s that Hyuck always eats way too many of, staining his hands with bright primary-colored candy coating. Never the picture of perfect punctuality, he shows up late, though still mid-argument over what movie they’d watch. 

Mark, who’d become quite the permanent fixture in their little group, had found his voice, arguing that they should watch an action movie due to the ratio of ‘things blowing up’ to ‘those gross kissing scenes’. Hyuck throws himself in the empty seat next to him, placing a pillow on his lap and folding his legs under him.

“I say we watch Mulan,” Hyuck pipes up, leaning forward a bit and making puppy dog eyes at Mark to guilt him into agreeing. Usually he folded like a stack of cards, but tonight he was more resolute.

Mark holds the bowl of popcorn out to Hyuck, making no comment otherwise. The rest of the group ignores his suggestion. Of course, that leaves him no option but to chant ‘Mulan, Mulan, Mulan!’. Jeno and Jaemin follow suit, chanting their movie of choice, then Renjun, and finally Mark.

The cacophony comes to an end when Jeno’s mom comes down and kindly asks them to be quiet, with the same pleasant eye-smile as her son. They all feel too bad to watch anything rowdy, so they settle on Mulan once again after making Hyuck promise to only sing along very, very quietly.

Within the first ten minutes he is shivering, his blanket abandoned by the door. Sure, he could get up, but he _really, really_ didn’t want to. He settled for making grabby hands at his bag. Mark noticed almost immediately, throwing his own comforter down to Hyuck, who snuggled up to his neck in the comfy fabric. It is long enough to reach both ends of the couch, though Mark gives up part of it so Hyuck can be more fully covered.

The combined warmth of the fuzzy blanket and familiar lull of Mulan put him to sleep, and when he woke up Mark was on the opposite end of the couch, scrolling through his phone. Hyuck had stretched out his legs from underneath them, resting his socked feet against Mark’s thigh. And he hadn’t pulled away.

Hyuck feels his heart swell. And then he promptly falls back asleep.

-

Hyuck is a lot of things, but a lightweight is _not_ one of them. Not at all. That’s what he keeps trying to explain to Mark through hiccups and giggles. He looks so pretty under the porch light, all blue-white and glowing. And shaking.

“Wait, Mark, why are you shaking,” Hyuck says, thinking hard for a moment, “It’s like you’re about to hatch!”

Mark sits down on the step, too tired to carry his own weight, like his knees just gave up and said goodnight. This seemed like a very good idea, now that Hyuck thought about it. His knees said goodnight too, knocking with Mark’s on the way down. He didn’t move away. Didn’t shift an inch.

“Like I’m about to _what_?” his face is too close to Hyuck’s for comfort, alcohol on his breath, though much fainter than the scent of vodka that radiated a mile wide around Hyuck. 

Hyuck nods, serious suddenly, “Once, my class hatched butterflies. And they wiggled all in their cocoons, like you’re doing now.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. And they went from gross little, uh, worms to pretty butterflies,” Hyuck gasps, “Markie, you’re _a butterfly_! That’s why you let me touch you now!”

He looks down at their knees for emphasis, suddenly all too aware of the point of contact. He’d finally gotten Mark in long pants, and they suited him, just like everything else did, because he is Mark Lee and could wear a sundress in the dead of winter and still look good. Mark looks aware too, and shifts away, slumping against the railing for support.

“I need another drink for this conversation,” he sighs, releasing a puff of vapor with his breath. Hyuck notices how cold it is for the first time, how the bone-deep chill has settled in through the warmth in his stomach.

He wants to set Mark on fire and crawl in his arms for warmth. He wants to lay his head on the dip of his collarbones and breathe and wait and sleep. He wants to hold his hand. He wants to go inside. So he does.

-

They finally have the conversation a few weeks later, sober and calm. Mark hangs upside down on Hyuck’s bed, familiar posters looking brand-new from his fresh perspective. Hyuck flips himself over too, to see things the same way as him.

Mark had picked up a girl’s pencil in the hall, and she’d giggled and half-hugged him in thanks. It was awful, the way Mark seemed to shut down, his face going blank. He shrugged her off and fled to the nearest bathroom, leaving Hyuck to follow and guide the door.

Somehow, he’d gotten to know Mark well enough that he wouldn’t want anyone near him for at least half an hour. After that, he’d be able to be coaxed out, maybe even into talking about it, or at least grunting his dissatisfaction.

This time felt different. So he waited the half an hour and then snuck Mark out of the school and back to his house, the brisk walk back in the cold silent and tense. 

“I feel stupid,” Mark says through the air bubble in his throat, sounding like he’s being held at gunpoint to discuss his feelings.

“This room is a no judgement zone.”

“Fine. Then pinkie-promise.”

Hyuck would have laughed at the absurdity of it if he didn’t promise not to judge. Playfulness is not usually one of Mark’s many virtues, so this is unexpected and new. Wordlessly, Hyuck hooks his pinkie with Mark’s smaller one. He doesn’t flinch from the contact at all. Baby steps.

“I just don’t like it. Touching, I mean. It’s always made me uncomfortable,” Mark says, and then sits upright like he’d been possessed. Hyuck follows suit, though his ab muscles scream much more than Mark’s seemed to.

“That’s fine,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and because it is.

Mark turns to him, looking like he just let go of a thousand tons of extra weight, and says, “I think people feel like I hate them, just because I don’t want to touch. And it sucks.”

“I don’t feel like you hate me,” Hyuck teases, leaning forward a little, “And I’m the only one that really matters, anyway.”

Hyuck thinks he daydreamed the tiny noise of agreement that Mark may or may not have made. Either way, his heart hums in his chest. Their pinkies are still linked.

-

Mark is running his thumb over Hyuck’s bare shoulder, cold to the touch, exposed to what chill the side of his house couldn’t block. All knit sweater, red and well-worn, cold nose and fingertips and flushed cheeks. Air puffs from his mouth. Vapor leaves a cloud. Hyuck leans into Mark’s hesitant touch, causing him to press firmer, more insistent. It’s comforting. And overwhelming.

Hyuck lets out another sob. He got a D on one of his exams, and he’d studied so hard for it, put in so much time and effort. And he still basically failed. His parents were still disappointed.

“You’ll be okay, you know,” Mark states like it’s a fact, and anyone who disagrees is a Class-A idiot.

Hyuck sighs and lets his knees go weak, half leaning against the rough brick of Mark’s house and half resting on his shoulder. He smells like cinnamon and sweet vanilla, an after school nap and getting a free pastry with your coffee because someone paid-it-forward. “It’s just hard to see it that way sometimes.”

“I know, Hyuck. Trust me, I know,” his voice breaks, “But you’re smart. And you managed to make me, like, analyze my feelings and stuff. So it’s my turn to help you.”

“Yeah?” Hyuck sniffs and marvels at the contact Mark is making with him, willingly.

He nods, and the sun hits his eyes and turns them to pools of caramel and coffee, gold and honey, every cliche ever used. “It’s just like you always say. Focus on the good things.”

“Like you?”

“Yeah, like me.”

Mark’s hand stills, palm flat, and he draws Hyuck in for a hug, gently guiding. Their first. So much has been overwhelming lately, pressing in at all sides, and Hyuck always felt like he was being compressed, boa-constricted until he couldn’t breathe. But this feels like he is being held in place. Soft and warm against the cold.

And Mark hugged him because he knew it would help, because he knew touching comforted Hyuck, that it was his second nature. He was comfortable enough to hold Hyuck in his arms. They stay like that, bundled in each others arms, until Hyuck stops crying.

-

“Can I tell you something?” Mark asks, hands wrapped around a chipped, powder blue mug. It contrasts against the bright red of his shirt, the warm brown of his skin, the pink flush on his cheeks. 

The cafe is only lit by fairy lights, warm and cozy, but Hyuck can still make out every detail of Mark in hyper-focus. It’s like he’d been half-blind his whole life and didn’t even know it. Before Mark he didn’t even know someones eyes could be so intricate, that you could count the crinkles in someone’s lips, the stray hairs on their forehead.

If Mark could hear his thoughts, he’d be petrified. Romance was not his strong suit.

Hyuck is so caught up in his own thoughts it takes him a minute to respond, “Of course. You don’t need my permission, you know.”

Mark hooks their ankles under the table, swaying them back and forth, and takes another long sip of his drink. He looks thoughtful. It’s almost scary.

“What’s going on in that tiny brain of yours?” Hyuck questions, having learned long ago Mark responds best to touchy-feely talk when it's veiled with humor. Like a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

“You have to promise not to freak out,” Mark cautions him, and Hyuck instantly holds out his pinkie. They keep them linked as he speaks, “I think I like you.”

Hyuck is suddenly very glad for their pinkie tradition, because if he had taken a sip of his drink and had anything in his mouth he almost certainly would have spit-taked like in movies, and that would have been very embarrassing and only mildly funny.

Closing his eyes, he counts to ten. Mark is still there when he opens them. With his free hand, he pinches first his arm, and then Mark’s. Once he’s verified he’s awake, reality sets in. It’s such a _Mark_ way of confessing. Hyuck loves it.

“You think?” he narrows his eyes jokingly, and then leans across the table a little, giving Mark room to back up. He doesn’t budge. Not an inch. “Because I know.”

Mark’s chocolate coffee breath fans over his lips as he moves forward, and then he gently closes the gap. It’s a simple peck, separated by a table, but it fries Hyuck’s brain enough that he hits his drink with his elbow and spills it across his lap.

While Mark scrambles to grab napkins, Hyuck just smiles. It's felt like a long time coming, sure; that didn't make it any less sweet.


End file.
